A Jewish Rhapsody
by Noche Buena
Summary: Biology projects with Paris, Jewish weddings in New York, keeping house in Hartford- who needs a life when you've got that?


Author's note: This takes place in early season two, so, Tristan is still here. Rory's a junior, still with Dean, etc, etc, etc....  
Rating: PG-11, most likely. :)  
  
  
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A beautiful, clear sunny day was on its beaming way into the Gilmore Girls' house on an early March morning. The birds were starting to cheep their songs, little pearly drops of dew were aching to be formed on the fresh green grass, and the coffeepot in the Gilmore's nostalgic kitchen practically had a sign on it saying, "Drink ME! I'm fun and exciting! Don't take the milk- don't you have any idea where that comes from? Cow breasts!"  
  
Everything seemed to glow and be merry- especially Lorelai Gilmore, who was bouncing off the walls with caffeinated joy coursing through her body.  
  
"Wheeeeeeeh! I'm wearing a SKIRT!"  
  
The exceedingly cheery 32 year old woman bounced herself into her 16 year old daughter's room and onto the sleeping form underneath the soft quilt. "I feel PRETTY!" she said matter-of-factly, shaking the girl's body. "Up, up, UP!"  
  
"Kindly shut up," grumbled the girl under the quilt, who was the one and probably only Rory Gilmore.  
  
"Oh, but don't you want to see my pretty new skirt?" Lorelai popped off the bed and twirled around just for that rush of seeing her skirt twirl in the vanity mirror across the room. "Ohhhhh, and it's so swishy and fun! Rory, you need a skirt like this so we can go out and twirl in front of Michel and cause temporary blindness and watch him run into stuff!"  
  
"I need sleep," she moaned, pulling the covers tighter around herself as she snuggled further into the warm recesses of her bed.   
  
Lorelai pulled the drapes open in Rory's room, taking in a huge gasp of air and then having to hack out a big giant dust pile lodged in her life-giving lungs. She peered down and saw several stacks of books behind the radiator, most of them with complicated unpronounceable names that Lorelai assumed were trashy Russian novels with big ripped men, because that was what she read and then had to hide because they were so thorougly trashy that her meager bookshelves should never have to look at them.  
  
"Honey?"  
  
"Uhn."  
  
"What have we said about stashing the books?"  
  
"I don't know. It's early. Brain no work without coffee."  
  
"We can deal with the luscious juice of love later."  
  
"Coffee now, please. You're a maniac."  
  
"As much as I would like the coffee now, which, by the way, I'm waiting for the damn coffee pot to turn on and it's taking as much time as it took for Legolas to come on screen and delight us in "Dork of the Rings," and it's really really frustrating so that's why I woke you up so then we can go play and steal Luke's hat!"  
  
A large thump hit the wooden floors, followed by a Neandrathalic-Rory-Morning sound.  
  
"Ow."  
  
Rory's head finally made an appearance, slowly rising from the side of the bed, a hand furiously rubbing the purple spot.  
  
"Aww, you grew a Barney on your head!"  
  
"Kill it, please."  
  
Rory rose slowly off the ground, blearily wiping her nose and sniffling a little. She shuffled past her mother into the kitchen, plopping herself down onto a stubborn wooden chair. Her mind was off in the land of Willy Wonka and his Orange Oompa-Loompas as her mother followed her out into the airy room.  
  
"Highness?" Lorelai kneeled down by her daughter, grandly placing her chin flat on her hands on the table.  
  
"Yes, willingful, well-paid slave?" Rory mumbled into her arms.  
  
Lorelai grumbled. "It's lady-in-waiting, m'lady!"  
  
"Okey dokey. Lady-in-waiting. Could you please go to Luke's and get me a coffee?"  
  
"You're not going with me? You too good for me, now? Oh, this saddens me, Rory." Lorelai whined before Rory pushed herself off her chair and schlepped back into her room and flopped onto her bed, closing the door behind her.  
  
"That is no way to treat a lady-in-waiting!" she mock-yelled. "I'm going to Luke's! By myself!" Lorelai got off her spot on the floor and took a deep sigh. "I'll be thinking about you every step I take.... Every move you make... Every stake you take... I'll be watching you," she said conspiratorially, all the while implanting the song in her head for all eternity.  
  
"Mom, if you're going through coffee withdrawal, please do it quietly.... I'm so..." Lorelai heard a deep yawn. "Sleeppyyy.... And it's not time for school yet."  
  
"Since when did Chilton start sending you kids to school on Saturday? Dammit, they never tell me anything!"  
  
"Really?!" Rory was suddenly wide awake, and her eyes shot open gleefully. "No school?"  
  
"Actually," Lorelai smiled evilly, "It isn't. It's Friday."  
  
Eyes scrunched shut now, Rory muttered a naughty curse word in her mind.  
  
A "Hello Kitty" pillow came whizzing out of the teenage girl's room and skidded on the kitchen table, ruffling the untouched newspapers. "You're mean," Rory groaned, kicking the covers back off of her and slumping out of bed. "Mean, mean lady. I hope you grow up and go crazy, feeding birds for the rest of your single grownup life."  
  
"That was harsh. I wouldn't wish that on Luke."  
  
"Yes, you would..." Rory rubbed her eyes as she pulled open her closet, eyes searching for the first blue thing she saw. Score, she thought, as she grabbed her Chilton school uniform on her first try.   
  
Six minutes later, Rory had broken the world's record for taking the longest time to put on her shoes and had pricked herself with the stupid Chilton bow tie crap thingie as well. "I hate school" was uttured at least 20 times before she came out of her bedroom at exactly 6:45 in the morning, looking very disgruntled with her eyes screwed shut and blinking slightly, with Sandman particles embedded in her eyes.  
  
"Morning, sleepyhead! Sleep well?" Lorelai chirped from her perch at the kitchen table. "You look so sexy."  
  
"Shuddup," Rory slumped onto a chair, not feeling very sexy at all. Her hair was flying all over the place and she had a honkin' zit right below her nose that had set up a colony of oil infesting tyrants that had a monopoly staked out on her nose.  
  
"It's time to make the pilgramige. Ready, Mary? Got yer camel?"  
  
"You are so weird."  
  
"But a sexy kind of weird, right?"  
  
"What is it with you and sexy this morning?"  
  
"I swear, it's my skirt. It's just so... Skirt-ey. This skirt should come with a warning label."  
  
"Can I just have some coffee?"  
  
"Not until you say it."  
  
"Say WHAT?"  
  
"You know," Lorelai's mouth quirked upwards mischieviously.   
  
Rory's eyes looked upward for a moment, her lips pursed- and then started. "Dear Mummy whom I love so much, will you please buy me the effervescence of life, the Holy Grail, the Holy Water of Our Lives, so that we do not perish unto the grassy grass of Stars Hollow, into the ever Midwestern-ness of this Eastern garbage bag, so that I can keep my sanity bestowed unto me by my ingenious mother?" and her hand formed a pose that looked as though she were holding a mug of coffee, and she brought the imaginary coffee cup to her lips and made a sipping noise. "Star-bucks," she said comically in a tone as though one would say "amen."  
  
"That wasn't so hard, was it?"  
  
"Again, I say it. You're weird. Nobody else's mother makes them do that."  
  
"But I buy you coffee! And Lane's mom makes her pray at every meal."  
  
"Which is probably the only reason I stick around here- coffee, and the fact that Lane's mom is scary," Rory reasoned.  
  
"Java-slut."  
  
"Pot, kettle," Rory smirked, and got off the chair to grab her yellow Eddie Bauer backpack lying by the side of the counter, already filled to the brim with a new novel that'd just arrived in its delightful brown package from Amazon.com the other night, cheerfully announcing its arrival at the "Goomore" house. She hoisted the bag over her shoulders, nearly tipping over from all the weight.  
  
"Ooh. Coffee. I'm so excited, Rory, I can't even tell you. Breakfast and coffee and chocolate *scones*. Oh, I feel so British." The pair walked towards the door, Rory balancing carefully as to not crash into some very valuable things- well, most of the things were laundry strewn about on various furniture pieces, but they were very valuable pieces of laundry.  
  
Lorelai tossed a light yellow jacket on, grabbing her purse and bookbag. "I've got classes today... Ugh. I feel like such a cradle-robber whenever I walk in the door. And then I have to work. And I don't wanna work. Wanna ditch."  
  
"Agreed, maternal unit."  
  
"You've been watching the Coneheads without me again."  
  
"Yep."  
  
"Okay, sweetie, you gotta stop it with the codeine cough syrup because pretty soon you're going to be saying that "Crossroads" had an actual plot within the crap."  
  
"Oh, I could never say that. That would just be too mean to the children of America. Not to mention, fraud. And also not to mention, I still refuse to see it."  
  
____________________________________  
  
"Damn you, Luke! This happens every single time we fight! I remember distinctly asking for 24 grains of salt on my eggs, not 22! I hate you!" Lorelai yelled loudly as she and Rory entered the finest establishment in Stars Hollow- Luke's.   
  
Heads surpringly did not turn.  
  
"Hello?" Rory called uncertainly, and looked around the restaurant. It was 7:00 in the morning, and usually it was absolutely packed with small-minded townies. But this time, the only person who could be seen within a fifteen foot radius was the owner- Luke- who was crouching beneath the counter, tinkering with some sort of something.  
  
"Luke's got a gun and he killed everybody!" Rory whispered furtively in Lorelai's ear. Her eyes widened. "That, or he's got an INVISIBILITY cloak. A giant one."  
  
"You've been stealing my Harry Potter books!" Lorelai accused.  
  
"Hey! I've been sick! Needed new books and Barnes and Noble.com is slow," she amended. "Besides, you, um, you..."  
  
"See! Watching 'Coneheads' without me is one thing, but stealing my only source of fun... Now, that's just disgraceful."  
  
"That, or the fact that you haven't noticed that the power's off," Luke said matter-of-factly, his blue baseball cap coming into view as well as a very cute and scruffy face. "Sorry. No coffee."  
  
Lorelai made a move as to go and maul him, starting to run- but Rory grabbed her mother's bookbag before Lorelai could make any attempt at homicide. The 33 year old woman sputtered angrily, pointing at Luke but finding no words to scream at him.  
  
"You-you-stupid- argh! What, couldn't you get a battery operated coffee maker? Come on! You're a restaurant owner! Isn't it illegal not to have one of those every square foot?" Lorelai's shoulders slumped. "Want coffee," she sulked, thoroughly disgruntled. "Food. Something."  
  
Luke tossed an apple over to their position in front of the door.   
  
"Oh! Mine!" Rory jumped up and grabbed the fruit before her mother could make an attempt to shove her daughter over.  
  
"Give it!"  
  
Luke grinned. Secretly, he wondered what they would do if he threw crumbs at them. Then, revieweing his thought, he figured that then Rory wouldn't stop Lorelai from jumping on him... Which, actually, wouldn't be so bad, either.  
  
"I don't want to go to the pancake house," Lorelai moaned. "It smells like cabbages. And pee."  
  
Luke went against his better judgement, and pulled a couple of chocolate chip and strawberry muffins out of the glass tray on the counter and placed them on a sterile white plate, and silently took two Frappucinos from the mini-fridge underneath the counter- which was only there for emergencies, and actually ran off of a hand crank thing.   
  
"All right, you weirdos. I bring food. You eat. You pay. You go, before the rest of the town finds out I have a secret stash," Luke muttered inconspicuously as he came around from the back of the restaurant, weaving his way through tables to find two very excited girls.  
  
He placed the food on the table fartheset away from the windows, and watched as the girls skidded over the linoleum floor, apple forgotten, and plopped themselves down on the table chairs. "Luke, you are my god," Lorelai grinned.  
  
"Feel free to worship me anytime," he told her, going around the counter and smiling inwardly to himself. Lorelai thought he was God. Well, a god. A sexy god? There were definite possibilities there.  
  
The girls garbled up the food quickly, all the while leaving conspicuous Frappucino stains on Lorelai's "Get Funky, You Fat Monkey" pink t-shirt not so conspicuously hid underneath a jean jacket and her swirly skirt.  
  
"Mom," said Rory condescendingly. "Why the shirt?"  
  
"Because the Betty Boop shirt that giggles when you hug it was in the wash."  
  
"You lie."  
  
"How so, daughter?"  
  
"Because you hate doing the wash."  
  
"Do... Not," her mother denied wholeheartedly.. " I'm a regular washerwoman! One might go so far as to say that I'm 'the suds!' at washing... Stuff."  
  
"What is that? Some sort of 70s terminology you invented but never got picked up?"  
  
"Hey! I was barely even born in the seventies! I was two! And I happen to be great at... Terminology. I'm the Queen of Terminology. I can term anything."  
  
"Okay, then. Term that thing over there," Rory pointed at the hat on Luke's head.  
  
Luke looked like a trapped animal, his eyes widening, having no idea what was going on in the twisted Gilmore brains. "You guys aren't... Going to hold me hostage and make me turn over the rest of the Frappucinos, are you?"  
  
"Well, we weren't until you told us there were more," Lorelai quipped.  
  
"Hey! Avoiding lady! Term!" demanded Rory.  
  
Her mother pensively looked at the soft blue hat on Luke's messy hair. After a moment, she paused, and started to talk, and then paused again, shaking her head. "Hmmmm.... Luke's love partner for life?"  
  
Luke realized they were talking about his hat and not the fact that he hoarded the Enemy- Frappucinos from a name-brand coffee place; and the fact that everybody knew that Frappucinos were for yuppies. He was a closet yuppy- and nobody but Lorelai could've made him hand them over and reveal his darkest secret.  
  
"Hm," grimaced Rory. "I'd give it a 6. Not up to your standards, 'Queen of Terminology.'"  
  
"Hunh. Bite me," Lorelai grumbled.  
  
"That's a four."  
  
"Be quiet, please."  
  
"Ooh, politeness. I give that an eight."  
  
"Oh, go stuff yourself."  
  
-----------------  
  
"Rory, *remember*, we have to get that project in and done by next Wednesday!" a frantic uniform-clad girl paced about Mr. Charlton's chemistry classroom, pursing her lips and muttering underneath her breath like a crazy woman. Mr. Charlton had given all the lab partners 15 minutes to talk about their upcoming projects with their partners, giving Paris ample time to ruin Rory's life.  
  
"Paris," said Rory, exasperated, sitting on one of the lab chairs, "It's not due for another three weeks!"  
  
Paris narrowed her eyes and glared at Rory. "Excuse me?"  
  
Rory threw up her hands. "Paris, you're *insane.* I don't have that kind of time and I'm sick of arranging my schedule for your completely irrational times. You're just going to have to deal with it this time. We have three weeks- come on." Normally, Rory would have agreed if they had two weeks to do it, but this was definitely pushing it. Paris was starting to get slave-driver tendencies and one always had to push those down.  
  
"I cannot deal! I *need* to get this done and turn it in."  
  
"Give me a good reason as to why I must submit myself to several hours of making models of carbon bonds of toilet paper rolls."  
  
Paris looked hesitant for a moment. "Well... I'd rather have it done sooner than later."   
  
"Okay, why?"  
  
The aspiring cancer researchist pursed her lips together. "My mother is making me go to one of her "friend's" wedding next week. She so nicely took it upon herself to find me a date, seeing as how she doesn't think I could. Date is Tristan."  
  
Rory's lips formed an "o" and her eyebrows raised skywards. "Yikes."  
  
"Yikes cubed and squared times infinity," she cleared up, her eyes growing wide. "I can't go with Tristan. I don't know what I would do, especially considering as how he never liked me in the first place," she said meaningfully to Rory, who was fidgeting uneasily on the metal stool.  
  
  
"Hey, I never knew that. I was just trying to help you before," Rory protested. "Just tell your mom you don't want to go with him."  
  
"Oh, I've tried. Several times. In fact, I believe she did ignore me every single time, and proceeded to tell me how 'wonderful' and 'magnificent' it would be if we happened to 'find a connection.' She's got these ideas in her head that we're absolutely perfect for each other," Paris said disgustedly. "Hardly," she said, snorting. Rory looked at her for a beat- Paris seemed a little- distant as she said this.  
  
"Of course," agreed Rory, without actually agreeing. "So, what does the bio project have to do with this wedding?"  
  
"Well, this wedding is going to be next weekend, and seeing as how there's absolutely no way I could escape it, even though the bride and groom are probably going to anull the marriage an hour afterwards or the bride is going to be left standing at the altar like Miss. Havisham in Great Expectations and then we won't ever get to eat the cake and my mom probably wouldn't let me, and seeing as how it's in New York, I won't be there then and then the weekend after that will be too late and-"  
  
"And in your world, there are no such things as weekdays? Or breathing?"  
  
"No, I'm busy studying on weekdays."  
  
Rory sighed in resignation, even though Paris probably had all her homework done last year. It was absolutely useless to fight against Paris- she was far too irritating. "Fine. This weekend, then."  
  
"Well, I'll probably see you at the book fair. We could work on it then. You are volunteering, right? It's for charity."   
  
Rory could've sworn Paris was smirking at her for her 'malevolence,' just because Rory hadn't been thinking up ways to volunteer at orphanages- or in Paris' case, frighten them all until they ran screaming from the room.  
  
"Of course," Rory replied simply, smiling thinly. "I'll see you there."  
  
How had she not known about this? Was her mother burning the Chilton letters again? But then again, Grandma would have told her.   
  
Paris smiled inward knowingly, and told Rory with upmost importance, "Saturday, 11 AM to 6 PM."  
  
Normally, this Gilmore girl would have been extremely overjoyed to go to a book fair for hours on end, especially one hosted by a very rich school and its very rich scholars full of immense dark libraries with lovely, musty books. As long as it wasn't *her* school, this would've been just ducky. Paris sensed this, and said something about it.   
  
Rory missed this by a mile, glaring inwardly at herself for stooping down to Paris' level of reverse psychology.  
  
"All right, class. Enough talking, more about pathogens," Mr. Charlton cleared his voice loudly, turning his back to them and starting to write words on the large dry erase board. "The test is next Friday, so make sure you're writing all this down in your binders."  
  
"Don't forget, Saturday," Paris muttered under her breath to Rory, who was absent-mindedly taking down notes in her notebook. "I won't," she said, just as determinedly.  
  
-------------------  
  
"Wait, so you actually don't want to go to a book fair this Saturday?" asked Lorelai, incredulous that her daughter really did not want to go and read for hours on end, 24/7. The two were standing at the front doorway of the Hartford Gilmore's mansion, both decked out in their most "respectable" clothes, meaning that Lorelai had ditched the "Get Funky, You Fat Monkey" shirt. Somehow, Rory had felt that her grandmother would not appreciate it in the least.   
  
"I know! But Paris is going to be there, and she's making me work on the project with her this weekend," clarified Rory, who went further into detail about the project- about the wedding, and how Paris had a scary mind-warping alien from the Planet Doom in her body.  
  
"Completely understandable," agreed Lorelai, straightening her hair in the shimmering glass of the door. "Good, bad, kinda sad?" she asked her daughter, in reference to her hair.  
  
"Mediocre," Rory said simply, pushing the doorbell with her index finger.  
  
"Oh, you're using words I can't pronounce again. I hate it when you do that," Lorelai winced. An elderly maid opened the door, and with a curt Spanish accent directed them to the cream-coloured living room.  
  
"Fabulous, Lorelai, you're both here!" The elder Gilmore woman jumped up and spryly walked over to the two, something queerly odd about her. "Fabulous, fabulous."  
  
"Uh, hello, I hail from the planet Earth. And yourself?" Lorelai's eyes widened and roamed over her mother. There was something wrong- for one thing, she was using words like 'fabulous,' and of course they would both be here. And of course....  
  
Before Mrs. Gilmore could reply, Lorelai finally pinpointed the difference. "You tattooed your eyelids!" she gasped.  
  
"No way," Rory shook her head. "Grandma?"  
  
Her grandmother looked duefully up at the ceiling with her perfectly tattooed eyeliner. "It's *encarved* eyeliner. I thought it would be nice to have extra time in the morning. I do not have to compensate for any of it."  
  
"All right, who made you the Cat Lady and died?" allusioned Lorelai. "I mean, really."  
  
"Goodness gracious, Lorelai, it's not as though I have- oh, Richard, there you are. I thought you had taken your own life under that pile of newspapers," she smiled at him, raising her eyebrows at the man in the corner of the room, who oddly enough, had not noticed the girls' arrival.   
  
"Hey Grandpa," Rory greeted her grandfather.  
  
"Rory!" his head shot up from the newspapers for just a beat before disappearing back down. "Did you know, I found the most wonderful spider- what do you call it?"  
  
"Web site?" offered Rory.   
  
"ConFARN those newfangled mac-heens," said Lorelai, noticing only then that the joke was completely lost on her daughter and father.  
  
"Yes, that- erm, thing. It's called h-tee-tee-pee-colon-slash-slash-w-w-w-dot-b-n-dot-com. Have you heard of it?" he asked, spelling each of the URL letters out, making Rory smile slightly. "Barnes and Noble dot com? I practically live there."  
  
"With tent and s'mores," Lorelai quipped, sitting down on the stiff couch. "Drink, Lorelai?" asked her mother.  
  
"Anything with alcohol in it," she replied back tiredly, eyes blinking slowly. Honestly, her family had no sense of humour.   
  
"So, Rory," interjected Emily Gilmore, mixing up a concoction of something very green. "Have you heard about the book fair this Saturday?"  
  
"She has," nodded Lorelai knowingly. "Very much so."  
  
"Yeah," sighed Rory from the chair next to her grandfather, placing the newspaper article she had begun to read down on her lap. "I'm volunteering."  
  
Emily shot a look at Lorelai, and filled up three martini glasses precisely to the brim and placed a lemon on each edge. "Why can't you be more like your daughter? She's volunteering." Rory had picked up the newspaper again before she could be brought into the arguement.  
  
"Of course she is," soothed Lorelai, knowing very well that Rory had been guilt tripped into doing it. Forced volunteering. Now there was an oxymoron seen only on chocolate bean plantations in Africa. "I did too, remember! Booster Club. I boosted like Pamela Lee has never boosted," she said honestly, eyes wide.  
  
"The money is all going to the school, for charity," her mother reminded her. "Of course it is," said Lorelai in exactly the same tone as she had before. "And why, again, does this school need more money?"  
  
"So they can build an olympic sized swimming pool, of course!" said Emily, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for a school in New England to have an olympic sized swimming pool.  
  
"Yes, and they need one of those, why?"  
  
"Because they already have a gymnastics room."  
  
Lorelai thought about rolling her eyes, but voted against the action. "Oh, the hardships. What would one do without an olympic sized swimming pool and tattooed eyelids? Our society would be absolute *scum*! People on the streets, with only a gymnastics room to store their energy they did not burn off in a giant swimming pool in the middle of winter."  
  
"Really, Lorelai, you should be more considerate. Your daughter does go to this school and will for the next two years."  
  
"Not if she drowns in the swimming pool."  
  
"Luckily, I'll have my orange arm floaties with me whenever I'm in a near vicinity of it," Rory said from behind the safety cover of her newspaper.   
  
"They should make a fund for orange arm floaties for all the children of Chilton," Lorelai nodded to herself. "And swimsuits that aren't made of of 100% polyester and tweed. Because those, I tell you, would itch."  
  
An akward silence ensued, leaving Rory to start reading with a rapt and unusual pace, and for Emily to start tapping her half-full martini glass anxiously, looking about the room.   
  
"New dress?"  
  
Lorelai coughed. The sound echoed through the room. "No, no. Found it in Luke's trash can."  
  
"Of course."  
  
Lorelai picked at her red polka dot wraparound dress that ended in a v-neck, softly landing on the curves of her chest. It really was a nice dress, hitting just below the knee so it made you *that* much more slender. A simple silver and pearl necklace (classic from Target, 1996) hung around her neck, her hair pulled back in a simple ponytail clasped by a silver filigree hair band. She shifted her clear blue eyes up towards the ceiling, anxiously awaiting God's time to strike her to hell with a thunderbolt. He really had horrible timing.  
  
Rory could definitely see with her own shaded eyes that her mother was uncomfortable. This happened a lot on Fridays. She grimaced as she read an article about dead sheep being found in the treetops in New Zealand. How in the world could you get a sheep up a tree? Seriously. She read a little more into as her mother and her grandmother made idle chit-chat to fill the blank silence of boredom.  
  
Maybe the sheep had simply been frightened out of their wits by a bear, or Luciano Pavoratti had decided to take a morning swim, she thought idly.  
  
"So, Rory, how is that newspaper?" chatted Emily, having drunk all her martini and edging up towards the bar for some more.   
  
"Tree dwelling sheep," she said, not looking up.  
  
"Yes, Mom, the kind of sheep that dwell in trees," said Lorelai, as naturally this would happen.  
  
"I did figure that into the equation, Lorelai."  
  
"Oh, no," Rory thought, wincing at the prospect of a big smackdown in the Gilmore mansion. She wondered whether or not she should clear the crystal for the mantle before Lorelai stepped on it.  
  
"Oh, my, dinner must be ready by now, shouldn't it?" Richard Gilmore cleared his throat dryly, and put his newspaper on a nearby coffee table. "I'm sure Lorelai would love to try the saumon in puff pastry, wouldn't you?"  
  
"Saumon in pastry?"  
  
"Oh, no," said Emily from her martini glass, raising her eyes. "Not actual pastry."  
  
"So there isn't any chocolate with the fish? Because I-"  
  
"Mom, it sounds great, doesn't it? Let's go into the dining room and eat some of it so we can decide later if the chocolate would taste better with it. " Rory rushed out a big breath of air, pulling her mother gently out of the formal cream sitting room, Emily and Richard in tow.  
  
------------  
  
Twenty minutes later of akward silences and pauses at the dining table (Lorelai finding the saumon exceptionally good but didn't say anything), Emily Gilmore finally said something. "You know, next week, we're going to a wedding. The Shanuir's wedding, in New York. It should be quite a social occasion. Of course, the staff won't be here to keep after the house next week when we're gone, seeing as how it is their break week next week."  
  
"I go to school with a girl who's going to a wedding in New York next week, too. She's my lab partner," Rory said, eyeing her mother knowingly.   
  
"Devil," mouthed Lorelai, "Not lab partner."  
  
"Who?" asked Emily, suddenly extremely interested.   
  
"Paris Geller."  
  
Rory could swear Emily made a little sneer at the mention of the name. Emily regained her composition and took a sip of her burgundy wine. "Oh, really. Who else do you know is going?"  
  
"Well, I don't really know him- but Tristan DuGrey."  
  
"Devil's dog," mouthed Lorelai again. "Not boy."  
  
"Good man, his grandfather," said Richard in a speculative voice.   
  
"Weren't you drunk when you said that before at my birthday party?" asked Rory gently.  
  
"Not drunk," he said in a dignified tone.  
  
"Intoxicated?" suggested Lorelai, making a futile attempt at trying to make her cloth napkin look like a duck. Somehow, it refused to be ducklike and it resumed its crumpled heap on her lap.  
  
He coughed, and eyed her, motioning for her not to say anything more. "He's an excellent businessman. Good fellow, really."  
  
"So, anyway," said Emily, changing the subject abruptly. "We'd need for someone to look after the house, and since I don't exactly trust any other servants to look after it, I was wondering whether or not you two would like to stay here next week. Chilton's just a few minutes from here and Rory wouldn't have to take that dreadful bus every day."  
  
"What, the house can't look after itself? Mom, he's about 30 years old now, don't you think he'll be fine on his own? We can just leave him our cell phone numbers and he can call us if he gets lonely," said Lorelai. She really didn't have any urge to stay in her mother's house- the house that was an ugly prison for her at Rory's age. Come on, Rory didn't want to stay here, after all, wasn't that N*Sync poster still up in the bedroom? It was a frightening poster.  
  
"Lorelai, I was just asking," said Emily lightly. "You don't actually have to if you don't want to."  
  
Lorelai was deftly aware that her mother using some type of reverse psychology on her, and furrowed her eyebrows quizzically at her.  
  
"You'd be away from Luke's," Rory said cautiously to her mother, but anyone could definitely tell that she wanted to play around in the huge mansion- it was like the Barbie DreamHouse she had wanted so badly as a seven year old girl. Every Harvard Girl Barbie needed a Dream House. "No coffee...."  
  
"Well, we do happen to have coffee pots here, you know.... Even running water."  
  
"And electricity," added Mr. Gilmore, chuckling at his own joke.  
  
Lorelai sighed inwardly. It was only- what, a week, right?  
  
"From when to when?" she said, as a dilligent daughter should. Except this dilligent daughter wasn't as dilligently happy to do it as any other dilligent daughter should be.  
  
As the maid, Marta, came in with the coffee and delicious smelling apple pie, Emily Gilmore had already (delightedly, mind you) started to fill her daughter in about the lodging information in the mansion.  
  
This was going to be one hell of a week.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
----  
  
I swear to goodness gracious, this will be a Trory fic. Mind you, a very very long Trory fic, full of plots with most likely large holes in them, and all that fun stuff. This is sort of an intro, not as long as I thought it would be, but it's still going to be a long intro and a looooong story full of sexual tension, Paris, and all that great stuff.  
  
I actually really like reviews, good or bad, so fill me in on what you think so far. It's kind of a general ficcy as well. 


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